This invention relates to a system and method for providing a graphical interface for a computer database, and, more particularly, to a system and method for interactively accessing a database including a media selection database storing movies, videos and graphical offerings.
As television and other video-based media move from the current pre-programmed regime to a video-on-demand regime, conventional methods for program selection like printed television guides, pay-per-view telephone selection, television programming grids and hierarchies of menus are becoming obsolete.
Available video titles stored in a database are likely to be constantly changing as new offerings are added and old offerings are deleted. This constant turnover makes it difficult and expensive to inform users of the current offerings, for example, by providing every subscriber with an updated, printed list of video selections at regular intervals.
Similarly, it is impractical to list a large number of available titles on the screen and ask the subscriber to make a selection for viewing due to the difficulty of finding particular movies in such a list. In addition, such an extensive listing makes it impossible, as a practical matter, to provide background information on the available titles.
Grid displays, sometimes conveniently used on television, are also inconvenient to use because they are not interactive. For example, a user must wait for a grid to scroll through all the lower channel offerings before being informed of what is available on the highest channel. Also, presently employed interfaces for video offerings use pre-programmed materials in the sense that they list all video offerings available from a given service and do not adjust according to user""s viewing habits.
A conventional way of providing interactive access to information is by a sequence of menus and submenus. In theory, media selections, including movies, video and graphical offerings, can be organized by categories and be accessible using a traditional hierarchy of menus. But such menu-driven schemes are not intuitive and would likely aggravate users, who would be required to struggle with a multi-level menu-driven search scheme.
Accordingly, it is desirable to provide a new interface for searching a database of media selections so as to advise users of available selections in a rapid, pictorial, intuitive and easily accessible manner.
Such a new interface is needed not only for television applications, such as video-on-demand and pay-per-view, but also for other video-based media applications such as computer media services, whether available on a stand-alone computer or over a network. These other computer applications also suffer from the lack of an intuitive interface for navigating among a rapidly growing universe of media selections.
The present invention provides an intuitive and easy-to-use interface for searching a computer database. The preferred embodiment provides a video-on-demand system for interactively choosing a video offering from a movie database stored in at least one computer system.
Individual video offerings from the movie database are represented by pictorial icons that can be displayed on a user""s television or monitor. The interface uses a physical metaphor (e.g., a physical object such as a globe or a torus) to represent the database. The user perceives the organization of the database as represented by a collection of icons arrayed on such a physical object. The notion of a physical metaphor (e.g., a geometric object) in general is referred to as a virtual space having logical coordinates, where each item of information, such as a video offering, is assigned to a point on the logical coordinates. The logical coordinates are determined in accordance with each item""s classification. A person skilled in the art will of course understand that this logical characterization is provided to explain the underlying concepts, and that the present invention relates to a physical computer designed to implement this conceptual view of the system as well as other objectives as described below.
In a preferred embodiment, the classifications include a subject category of movies (e.g., comedy) and the place of the first character of the title of the movie in the alphabet. A globe or torus is used as a physical metaphor where each video offering is assigned to a point on the globe or torus. The database is represented such that the system arrays pictorial icons corresponding to video offerings on a grid superimposed over the globe or torus. The video offerings may include movies, television programs, documentaries, music videos, educational programs, and the like.
The virtual space is, thus in this embodiment, is a globe or a torus where icons may be arrayed alphabetically by title along lines of longitude and by subject category along lines of latitude.
After having displayed the globe or torus metaphor to acclimate the user to the search protocol, the system of the preferred embodiment permits selecting a particular category and displays a limited number of offerings from that category. The system also displays at the bottom of the screen a navigator icon for showing the user his current xe2x80x9clocationxe2x80x9d in the database. The user then reviews the pictorial icons on a monitor and interactively selects a desired video offering.
Once the system has displayed particular icons corresponding to available offerings, the search process begins. If a particular offering is of interest, the user can xe2x80x9chighlightxe2x80x9d the icon corresponding to that offering. When the user chooses to highlight an icon, the system provides an animation sequence for display on the user""s television in which the highlighted icon grows in size and the remaining icons shrink in size. If a particular offering turns out to be not of interest the user can highlight another currently displayed icon corresponding to another offering. Once an icon has been highlighted, the user can preview the corresponding movie or video.
The system also records the user""s viewing habits in order to present to the user the offerings in a manner that facilitates the selection process.
As indicated, the application of this invention is not limited to selecting video offerings on a television. For example, it can be used for selecting a video tape in a video rental store, or selecting data available on remote computers through a network such as the Internet. In fact, the invention can be adapted to any database to be interfaced by a user.
Thus, the method of this invention is for interactively accessing a database of selections, each having classifications, stored in at least one computer. This method includes the steps of representing at least a portion of the database with a geometric object corresponding to a virtual space having logical coordinates, wherein each selection is assigned to a point on the logical coordinates in accordance with its classifications, and displaying on a monitor pictorial icons representing some of the selections stored in the database in accordance with the logical coordinates.